The search for origins is as controversial as it is persistent. Many critics staunchly reject efforts to locate singular origins or answers in relation to meaning or interpretation, while others struggle to recover an original historical or cultural context for their texts. Some writing on anime and manga has tried to see Japanese popular culture as the reflection of a putatively traditional culture in which it originates, while academic criticism has frequently regarded these media as opportunities to uncover the recent or constructed quality of Japanese tradition, or to radically reconceive what contemporary Japan is or could be. Finally like film and newer media, anime has attracted the attention of scholars from a wide range of disciplines who have applied their own perspectives and methodologies to it, even as other critics argue that anime requires a radically different and radically original new approach.

With volume 9 we seek to shed some new light on these debates with articles that address the concept of origin in a sophisticated, original way. We are interested in submissions covering a wide range of different texts, approaches, and disciplines, particularly those underrepresented in Japanese popular culture criticism now. Possible topics include (but are definitely not limited to) the following:

• Popular culture texts whose stories turn on the theme of origins or denial of origins: character origin tales; stories of birth, rebirth, and creation; metaphysics; history and prehistory; nationalism or cosmopolitanism; homecoming or diaspora.

• The origins of manga or anime: the question of their premodern antecedents; auteurism and canonicity; national origins of manga and anime, and their non-Japanese versions.

• Adaptations, and reproductions of “original” works: parody, pastiche, and dôjinshi; remediation; uniqueness vs. mass production; anime or film adaptations of manga, or manga adaptions of prose; franchises and media mixes in which a single story crosses multiple media and products.

• Work that treats the notion of origin from the perspective of visual composition: visual hierarchies, reading order, page layout, flipping, flattening, etc.

We also encourage metacritical work that discusses the history or fortunes of manga and anime criticism inside and outside Japan. With the ninth volume of the series, we wish to open a space for a self-critical evaluation of Mechademia’s own role in anime and manga studies. To this end, some of these topics overlap deliberately with previous volumes of Mechademia, and authors are encouraged to engage with articles in earlier volumes and continue or redirect discussions that originated there.

Submissions should address the notions of origins explicitly, but as the list above suggests, contributors can come at this theme from a wide range of different directions. In order to represent a wide range of approaches and methodologies in this volume, we encourage scholars from various disciplines to relate their own ongoing work to this broad theme.

The deadline for submissions is January 4, 2013
to submissions(at)Mechademia.org

Essays may be up to 5,000 words in length, with shorter pieces also welcome, and we will consider submissions in creative, non-traditional formats as well.

STYLE GUIDE

Download the Mechademia Style Guide (vers. 4.0, July 2011) – pdf format

FOR QUESTIONS ABOUT THE SUBMISSIONS PROCESS

Please contact Wendy Goldberg, Submissions Editor
submissions(at)mechademia.org

FOR OTHER INQUIRIES

Frenchy Lunning, Editor-in-Chief, Mechademia
frenchy AT mechademia.org

In the wake of the disasters and tragedies of 3.11, the cry “Another world is possible” becomes all the more urgent. And so, we ask: How can counterfactual histories, parallel universes, and possible worlds of Japanese popular culture and media formations contribute to recognizing and ending the class warfare that underlies the maintenance of nuclear energy and entrenched forms of socio-historical inequality, and thus contribute to the formation of another world?

From the 1980s to the present, critique of popular culture in Japan has consistently emphasized a problem with narrative. Recent attention has shifted to other forms and practices, such as character (kyara), worlds, and fan repurposing. Narrative has been largely ruled out or dismissed, and often history as well. Nonetheless, our goal here is not a return to narrative analysis, but rather to call attention to the implications of the rise of modalities such as characters and worlds for storytelling and history.  As such, we invite contributions that deal with this specific question:

Japanese popular culture — manga, anime, games, and SF — abound in scenarios in which our contemporary reality appears to be but one possible outcome within an open situation. What are the implications of such an understanding of our reality?

We envision some of the following lines of inquiry.

—Counterfactual Histories.  Science fictions often encourage us to approach history in terms of ‘what if’ scenarios — what if there were aliens behind the emperor-system, or what if there were a battle between superheroes during WWII?  Such scenarios invite us to understand history through counterfactual situations.  But rather than dismiss such scenarios as non-factual, we ask: What are the social and political implications of understanding our historical reality in such terms?

—Parallel Universes.  Popular culture frequently juxtaposes different realities in the form of alternative timelines or bifurcating temporalities.  Here narrative does not hinge on teleological movement (grand or petty) but opens questions of temporality and temporal experience.  Thus, instead of assuming that such scenarios destroy story-telling or historical movement, we ask: What kinds of storytelling practices and forms of communication emerge across bifurcating temporalities?

—Possible Worlds.  Attention to the role of character in media mix and fan practices has highlighted the importance of media and technologies in the formation of “worlds” and “worldviews.” And so, we call for submissions that explore the mediatic and technological dimension of these possible worlds, with an eye to the construction of value within circulation as well as socio-political possibilities or potentiality of Japanese popular culture.

The deadline for submissions is January 6, 2014
to submissions(at)Mechademia.org

Essays may be up to 5,000 words in length, with shorter pieces also welcome, and we will consider submissions in creative, non-traditional formats as well.

STYLE GUIDE

Download the Mechademia Style Guide (vers. 4.0, July 2011) – pdf format

FOR QUESTIONS ABOUT THE SUBMISSIONS PROCESS

Please contact Wendy Goldberg, Submissions Editor
submissions AT mechademia.org

FOR OTHER INQUIRIES

Frenchy Lunning, Editor-in-Chief, Mechademia
frenchy AT mechademia.org

As passive consumers of manga and anime become active users of cultural commodities, this volume explores the possibilities of, and challenges for, engagement

Manga and anime fans can no longer be considered passive consumers of popular culture. They are users, in whose hands cultural commodities can provide instant gratification but also need to be understood as creative spaces that can be inhabited, modified, and enhanced. User Enhanced, the sixth volume of the Mechademia series, examines the implications of this transformation from consumer to creator.

Order a copy today!

We seek submissions for the eighth volume of Mechademia, an annual forum for critical work on Japanese manga, anime, and related arts. The theme of volume 8 is “Manga Life: Tezuka…”

Tezuka Osamu is one of Japan’s most renowned anime and manga creators, often regarded as an origin figure in Japanese popular culture. Published in conjunction with a major exhibit of Tezuka’s Work to be held at the Weisman Museum in Minneapolis Minnesota in 2013, Mechademia 8 will attempt to provide some new perspectives on Tezuka—including his context and his legacy–through the broad rubric of “Manga Life.”We imagine this theme to encompass:

—Tezuka’s profound interest in the relationship between human and non-human life forms

—drawn or animated characters as quasi-autonomous life forms at the center of multimedia franchises or media mixes, a development Tezuka’s work (across manga and anime, for example) helped foster.

—the emergence of professional manga creators; the ability of artists and writers to live a “manga life” as manga production emerges as a viable livelihood.

— links between popular culture and daily life, with attention to the transformations in everyday life in Japan during the span of the Shôwa period (1926-1989), which corresponds almost perfectly with Tezuka’s life (1928-1989).

We invite submissions that deepen or complicate our understanding of these areas, centered on any aspect of Tezuka’s work and life, as well as on related artists and work. We particularly welcome essays exploring historical and political implications of Tezuka’s “manga life.”

The deadline for submissions is January 9, 2012 to submissions(at)Mechademia.org Essays may be up to 5,000 words in length, with shorter pieces also welcome, and we will consider submissions in creative, non-traditional formats as well.

STYLE GUIDE

Download the Mechademia Style Guide (vers. 4.0, July 2011) – pdf format

FOR QUESTIONS ABOUT THE SUBMISSIONS PROCESS

Please contact Wendy Goldberg, Submissions Editor
submissions AT mechademia.org

FOR OTHER INQUIRIES

Frenchy Lunning, Editor-in-Chief, Mechademia
frenchy AT mechademia.org

Volume #2: Networks of Desire (Fall 2007) traces the web of desires that structure anime and manga, from techno-carnal fantasies and animalistic consumption to political nostalgia and existential hunger. This volume presents work by Azuma Hiroki, Margherita Long, Daisuke Miyao, Masami Toku, Keith Vincent, and many others, plus photography by Eron Rauch. Order a copy today!

Volume #3: Limits of the Human (Fall 2008) investigates the way anime, manga, and related media have probed the contours of human identity and activity. Includes articles by Steven Brown, Michael Dylan Foster, Laura Miller, Ôtsuka Eiji, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Teri Silvio, Mark C. Taylor, Yomota Inuhiko, and others, plus critical manga by Natsume Fusanosuke and MUSEbasement. Order a copy today!

Volume #4: War/Time (Fall 2009) addresses the implications of war in Japanese popular culture, not only the legacy of war in these texts, but also their odd affinity for warfare, the gravitation of popular culture in the orbit of modern conflict. Includes contributions by Marc Driscoll, Tom Looser, Christine Marran, Sakate Yôji, Dennis Washburn, and others. Order a copy today!

Volume #5: Fanthropologies (Fall 2010) and
Volume #6: User Enhanced (Fall 2011) examine the spaces, practices, identities, and ideas that are part of the construction called fandom, and the ways fans alter themselves through the enactment and reception of various performances and processes. Volume 5 includes contributions by Marilyn Ivy, Ian Condry, Ōhtsuka Eiji, Amamiya Karin, and many others, as well as a full-color cosplay photography section curated by Eron Rauch and Christopher Bolton. Volume 6 includes work by Itô Gô, Livia Monnet, and Miyadai Shinji, among others, with photography by Rio Saitô. Order volume 5 and 6 today!

Volume #7: Lines of Sight (Fall 2012) examines the new visual and conceptual modes advanced by anime and manga, centering particularly the replacement or modification of a formerly dominant Cartesian perspectivalism with new perceptual and conceptual regimes. The volume covers popular media from manga, video games, and animation, to architecture, media art, and software design, with additional attention to earlier media, from 12th-century picture scrolls and 19th-century woodblock printing to prewar kamishibai. Contributors include Stefan Riekeles, Atsuko Sakaki, Miryam Sas, Timon Screech, Fujimoto Yukari, and many others.

Volume #8: Tezuka Osamu (Fall 2013). We are now accepting submissions for this volume. For details see the Call for Papers on this web site.

Introduction

Frenchy Lunning

Sites of Transposition

The Art of Cute Little Things: Nara Yoshitomo’s Parapolitics
Marilyn Ivy

Transforming U.S. Anime in the 1980s: Localization and Longevity
Brian Ruh

Speciesism, Part II: Tezuka Osamu and the Multispecies Ideal
Thomas LaMarre

Undoing Inter-national Fandom in the Age of Brand Nationalism
Koichi Iwabuchi

Patterns of Consumption

World and Variation: The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative
Ōtsuka Eiji
Translated and with an introduction by Marc Steinberg

Frenchness and Transformation in Japanese Subculture, 1974-2000
Anne McKnight

Monstrous Media and Delusional Consumption
in Kon Satoshi’s Paranoia Agent
Gerald Figal

Lucid Dreams, False Awakenings: Figures of the Fan in Kon Satoshi
Kerin Ogg

A Cosplay Photography Sampler
Eron Rauch and Christopher Bolton

Modes of Circulation

Dark Energy: What Fansubs Reveal about the Copyright Wars
Ian Condry

Akihabara: Conditioning a Public “Otaku” Image
Patrick W. Galbraith

Comic Market: How the World’s Biggest Amateur Comic Fair
Shaped Japanese Dōjinshi Culture
Fan-Yi Lam

Styles of Intervention

Suffering Forces Us to Think Beyond the Right-Left Barrier
Amamiya Karin
Translated and with an introduction by Jodie Beck

Fans Behaving Badly:
Anime Metafandom, Brutal Criticism, and the Intellectual Fan
Kathryn Dunlap and Carissa Wolf

Anatomy of Permutational Desire:
Perversion in Hans Bellmer and Oshii Mamoru
Livia Monnet

A Cocoon with a View: Hikikomori, Otaku, and Welcome to the NHK
Marc Hairston

Reorganizations of Gender and Nationalism:
Gender Bashing and Loliconized Japanese Society
Naitō Chizuko
Translated by Nathan Shockey

Aeryn’s Dolls
Jin C. Tomshine

Review and Commentary

The Space Between Worlds: Mushishi
and Japanese Folklore/Paul Jackson

Animation Beyond the Boundaries/Susan Napier

Three Faces of Eva: Evangelion 1.01: You Are (Not) Alone
Cruel Angels? Cruel Fathers!/Paul M. Malone
Epic Fail: Still Dreary, After All These Years/Madeline Ashby
The Rebuild of Anime/Thomas LaMarre

Brief Visions of a Vast Landscape/Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog

Death Note: The Killer in Me Is the Killer in You/Susan Napier

トレンド Torendo

Otakuology: A Dialogue/Patrick W. Galbraith and Thomas LaMarre

ORDER MECHADEMIA

Our publisher, University of Minnesota Press, is now taking orders for Mechademia Vols. 1 through 5

Legacies of Sovereignty

“The Filmic Time of Coloniality: On Shinkai Makoto’s The Place Promised in Our Early Days” by Gavin Walker; “Theorizing Manga: Nationalism and Discourse on the Role of Wartime Manga” by Rei Okamoto Inouye; “Transcending the Victim’s History: Takahata Isao’s Grave of the Fireflies” by Wendy Goldberg.

Control Room

“Gothic Politics: Oshii, War, and Life without Death” by Tom Looser; “Oshii Mamoru’s Patlabor 2: Terror, Theatricality, and Exceptions That Prove the Rule” by Mark Anderson; “Waiting for the Messiah: The Becoming-Myth of Evangelion andDensha otoko” by Christophe Thouny; “War by Metaphor in Densha otoko” by Michael Fisch.

History/Memory

“Imagined History, Fading Memory: Mastering Narrative in Final Fantasy X” by Dennis Washburn; “Haunted Travelogue: Hometowns, Ghost Towns, and Memories of War” by Michael Dylan Foster; “Three Views of the Rising Sun, Obliquely: Keiji Nakazawa’s A-bomb, Osamu Tezuka’s Adolf, and Yoshinori Kobayashi’s Apologia” by Sheng-mei Ma; “Virtual Creation, Simulated Destruction, and Manufactured Memory at the Art Mecho Museum in Second Life” by Christopher Bolton.

Genre Violence

“Ninja, Hidden Christians, and the Two Ferreiras: On Endô Shûsaku and Yamada Fûtarô” by Takayuki Tatsumi, translated by Seth Jacobowitz; “Monsters at War: The Great Yôkai Wars, 1968-2005” by Zília Papp; “From Jusuheru to Jannu: Girl Knights and Christian Witches in the Work of Miuchi Suzue” by Rebecca Suter.

Mobilization/Domestication

“Empire through the Eyes of a Yapoo: Male Abjection in the Cult Classic Beast Yapoo” by Christine Marran; “Nippon ex Machina:
Japanese Postwar Identity in Robot Anime and the Case of UFO Robo Grendizer” by Marco Pellitteri; “Kobayashi Yoshinori Is Dead:
Imperial War/Sick Liberal Peace/Neoliberal Class War” by Mark Driscoll; “Manga: A Comic Interlude from Darumasan-ga-koronda, ‘Land Mine in Central Park’” by Yoji Sakate, translated by Manami Shima, art by Chinami Sango.

Review and Commentary

“Two Phases of Japanese Illustrated Fiction” by Charles Shiro Inouye; “Paradise Lost…and Found?” by Paul Jackson; “Molten Hot: Japanese Gal Subcultures and Fashions” by Theresa M. Winge; “Monstrous Toys of Capitalism” by Brent Allison; “If Casshern Doesn’t Do It, Who Will?” by Deborah Shamoon; “Psychoanalytic Cyberpunk Midsummer Night’s Dreamtime: Kon Satoshi’s Paprika” by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog.

トレンド Torendo

Interview with Murase Shûkô and Satô Dai by Deborah Scally, Angela Drummond-Matthews, and Marc Hairston, translated by Chelsea Colin and Watanabe Yuki.

“Preface: The Limits of the Human” by Frenchy Lunning; “Introduction: The Limits of ‘The Limits of the Human’” by Christopher Bolton.

人間に Contours–Around the Human
“Refiguring the Human” by Mark C. Taylor; “The Otherworlds of Mizuki Shigeru” by Michael Dylan Foster; “Extreme Makeover for a Heian-Era Wizard” by Laura Miller; “Undressing and Dressing Loli: A Search for the Identity of the Japanese Lolita” by Theresa Winge; “Manga: Komatopia” by Natsume Fusanosuke, translated by Margherita Long with an introduction by Hajime Nakatani.

人間と Companions–With the Human
“Speciesism, Part One: Translating Races into Animals in Wartime Animation” by Thomas LaMarre; “Stigmata in Tezuka Osamu’s Works” by Yomoto Inuhiko, translated and introduced by Hajime Nakatani; “Disarming Atom: Tezuka Osamu’s Manga at War and Peace” by Ôtsuka Eiji, translated by Thomas Lamarre; “States of Emergency: Urban Space and the Robotic Body in the Metropolis Tales” by Lawrence Bird; “Emotional Infectivity: Cyborg Affect and the Limits of the Human” by Sharalyn Orbaugh; “Manga: The Signal of Noise”, written and adapted by Adèle-Elise Prévost and illustrated by Musebasement.

人間で Compossibles–Of the Human
“Gundam and the Future of Japanoid Art” by Takayuki Tatsumi,t ranslated and with a response by Christopher Bolton; “Pop Culture Icons: Religious Inflections of the Character Toy in Taiwan” by Teri Silvio; “Machinic Desires: Hans Bellmer’s Dolls and the Technological Uncanny in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence” by Steven J. Brown.

“Postcript: On ‘The Living’” by Cary Wolfe.

Review and Commentary
“A Healing, Gentle Apocalypse: Yokohama kaidashi kikô” by Marc Hairston; “Lost in Transition: Train Men and Dolls in Millennial Japan” by Susan Napier; “Howl’s Moving Castle” by Antonia Levi; “Playing Outside the Box with Mind Game” by Paul Jackson; “From Transnationalization to Globalization: The Experience of Hong Kong” by Wendy Siuyi Wong; ”’Always Exoticize!’ Cyborg Identities and the Challenge of the Nonhuman in Full Metal Apache” by Joshua Paul Dale; “Postmodern Is Old Hat: Samurai Champloo” by William L. Benzon.

トレンド Torendo
“Giant Robots and Superheroes: Manifestations of Divine Power, East and West – An Interview with Crispin Freeman” by Frenchy Lunning.

GRRRL少女／Shôjo
“Revolutionary Romance: The Rose of Versailles and the Transformation of Shôjo Manga” by Deborah Shamoon; “Shôjo Manga! Girls’ Comics!: A Mirror of Girls’ Dreams” by Masami Toku; “Ranma ½ Fan Fiction Writers: New Narrative Themes or the Same Old Story?” by Meredith Suzanne Hahn Aquila; “Doll Beauties and Cosplay” by Mari Kotani, translated by Thomas Lamarre; “A Japanese Electra and her Queer Progeny” by Keith Vincent.

時間性 / Powers of time
“Thieves of Baghdad: Transnational Networks of Cinema/Anime in the 1920s” by Daisuke Miyao; “When Pacifist Japan Fights: Historicizing Desires in Anime” by Hiromi Mizuno; “The Quick and the Undead: Visual and Political Dynamics inBlood: The Last Vampire” by Christopher Bolton; “Bridges of the Unknown: Visual Desires and Small Apocalypses” by Eron Rauch (photography and text), designed by Marantha Wilson.

動物化 / Animalization
“Malice@Doll: Konaka, Specularization, and the Virtual Feminine” by Margherita Long; “The Animalization of Otaku Culture” by Azuma Hiroki, translated by Yuriko Furuhata and Marc Steinberg; “Sex and the Single Pig: Desire and Flight in Porco Rosso” by Patrick Drazen; “The Education of Desire: Futari etchi and the Globalization of Sexual Tolerance” by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog; “My Father, He Killed Me; My Mother, She Ate Me: Self, Desire, Engendering and the Mother in Neon Genesis Evangelion” by Mariana Ortega.

希望 / Horizons
“Fly Away Old Home: Memory and Salvation in Haibane-Renmei” by Marc Hairston; “In the World That Is Infinitely Inclusive: Four Theses on Voices of a Distant Star and The Wings of Honneamise” by Shu Kuge; “Between the Child and the Mecha” by Frenchy Lunning.

Review and Commentary
“Godzilla’s Children: Murakami Takes Manhattan” by William Benzon; “Anime: Comparing Macro and Micro Analyses” by Brent Allison; “Crazy Rabbit Man: Why I Rewrite Manga” by Trina Robbins; “Brain-Diving Batou” by Brian Ruh; “Lurkers at the Threshold: Saya and the Nature of Evil” by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog.

トレンド Torendo
“UAAAAA! Trashkultur! An Interview with MAK’s Johannes Wieninger” by Christopher Bolton.

Essays
“Anifesto” by Christopher Bolton and Frenchy Lunning, illustrated by Sarah Pocock; “The Japan Fad in Global Youth Culture and Millennial Capitalism” by Anne Allison; “Globalizing Manga: From Japan to Hong Kong and Beyond” by Wendy Siuyi Wong; “The World of Anime Fandom in America” by Susan Napier; “Costuming the Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay” by Theresa Winge; “Assessing Interactivity in Video Game Design” by Mark J. P. Wolf; “Mori Minoru’s Day of Resurrection” by Tatsumi Takayuki, translated by Christopher Bolton; “Superflat and the Layers of Image and History in 1990s Japan” by Thomas Looser; “Kurenai no metalsuits, ‘Anime to wa nani ka/What is animation’” by Ueno Toshiya, translated by Michael Arnold; “The Multiplanar Image” by Thomas Lamarre; “The Werewolf in the Crested Kimono: The Wolf-Human Dynamic in Anime and Manga” by Antonia Levi; “Metamorphosis of the Japanese Girl: The Girl, the Hyper-Girl, and the Fighting Beauty” by Mari Kotani; “Revolutionary Girl Utena: Manga and Anime Citations” compiled by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog.

Review and Commentary
“The Song at the End of the World: Personal Apocalypse in Rintarô’s Metropolis” by Bill Benzon; “The Influence of Manga on Japan: Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society, by Sharon Kinsella” by Vern Bullough; “The Shock of the Newtype: The Mobile Suit Gundam Novels of Tomino Yoshiyuki” by Patrick Drazen; “The Yin and Yang of Schoolgirl Experiences: Maria-sama ga miteru and Azumanga Daioh” by Marc Hairston; “Historicizing Anime and Manga: From Japan to the World: Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics by Paul Gravett and Watching Anime, Reading Manga: Twenty-five Years of Essays and Reviews, by Fred Patten” by Brian Ruh; “In the Sound of the Bells: Freedom and Revolution in Revolutionary Girl Utena” by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog.

トレンド Torendo
A Series of Interviews by Michelle Ollie